#and there's this whole thing about making choices and living with the consequences

[kerosene-in-a-blender]

I'm thinking again about how Bells Hells repeatedly insisted they had "no choice" but to release Predathos in the finale, when they very much did have a choice even as they felt it was the best of a series of bad options. They might not have liked the choice, but they did choose to go into the Hallowed Cage instead of doing something else. And the thing is, this refusal of their own agency is something they've done the whole time. One of their most aggravating traits as an adventuring party has been repeatedly asking everyone they come across (gods, world leaders, Predathos itself) what they want as a way to avoid choosing what to do for themselves, to the point that the Raven Queen eventually calls them out on it.

And the fact that the larger political and theological implications of the finale were carried out largely without Bells Hells only further highlights their lack of acknowledged agency. It was in conversations between Vax and Morrighan and Deanna with their respective deities that the implications of the gods becoming mortal where dealt with and the question of whether saving them was worth it was answered (yes they were worth saving, because everyone is). The logistics of what to do with the Ruidians who want to live on Exandria and the establishment of diplomatic relations with the moon were settled by Vox Machina and the Mighty Nein, with Bells Hells taking pretty much no part. Bells Hells lack of involvement in either of these series of conversations makes it feel like these events occurred outside of them despite being spurred entirely by their actions and choices.

But what really makes this stick out to me, is that I've written about characters who actively defer their own agency to external forces before in regards to Moc Weepe and Jonas Spahr of Midst. But where I think both of their arcs work and Bells Hells falls flat is the narrative of Midst acknowledges their deferral of agency and directly grapples with it. Learning to acknowledge that he is making choices and those choice have consequences that he needs to take responsibility for is a key component of Spahr's character arc, which climaxes with him finally making a decisive choice for himself. Weepe in contrast continues to deny his own agency even in the face of the woman he loves begging him to take some accountability (on her deathbed no less!) and this ultimately leads him to his ruin. Whereas with Bells Hells everything worked out just fine in the end despite all their waffling and refusal of responsibility without any consequences that would make them take a good long look at what they did, or bite them for choices they refuse to acknowledge that they made.

[sldlovescartoons]

…Ah, what the hell, it’s been a minute since I’ve been intentionally cruel, I might as well give myself a little treat by being an asshole on purpose. Don’t worry, I’ll put MY thoughts in a numbered list, maybe that will help out your comprehension.

1. Let’s get this out of the way first, I am the original replier. You’d think someone with an English degree would have a high enough reading comprehension level to catch that.

2. While there are contexts that ‘but’ would mean two things true at once, that is not what you did in the instances I indicated to, as I specified the occurrence of compound sentences

Since I’ve decided I’m in my asshole bag, I went ahead and clearly marked out the incidence so you can’t miss it. When ‘but’ is used like this, it’s generally considered negatory language. I’m surprised they didn’t teach you that in college, I only got a measly degree in computer graphic design, and they still bothered to teach me this.

3. If you didn’t want to come off as thinking that people salty about the prominence if VM and M9 in the finale/campaign as silly or otherwise ignorant, starting out the top of the post with “I know some folks are going to be upset about the amount of time Vox Machina and the Mighty Nein took up during this finale” and spend one whole bullet point dedicated to reminding people that it’s not other people’s fault if you only watched c3 or if c3 is your favorite. That’s definitely not indicative of a pattern of thought/belief about certain parts of the fandom. Oh wait, it is! It also risks people of that group not wanting to have discourse with you, especially when everything you say on the matter indicates that you’ve already made up your mind and won’t be any fun to talk to because you’re going to pull out the shows nature as some sort of gotcha card to dismiss their feelings/thoughts on the matter.

4. You’ve yet to point out in any meaningful way why it being a DnD actual play would interfere or make narrative satisfaction different than any other type of story telling. Since you have an English degree, I’m sure you know that conflict, cause and effect, and consequence are core to good storytelling and narrative satisfaction. There is a long storied history of people being mad that stories don’t have proper consequences for choices. Most complaints about I’ve seen about the show’s consequences or lack thereof have been pretty legit. Some kooks, like always, but mostly pretty grounded. I’d maybe give your opinion on it being for the cast more weight if the other campaigns didn’t have lots of consequences with narratives that actually affected the world/events because of the characters choices. Fjord was chased down by sea monsters everytime he was on the ocean until the first Reunited Ep where they took on his former patron, but Orym? Nah. Vax got indebted to the raven queen to save his sisters life and that resulted in him being a revenant and Champion of the Raven Queen, taken away for 30 years, but the Bells can just do Ludinus’s plan for him and get bailed out by the previous parties because why would choosing to turn the gods mortal result in things like consequences from all the religious people on the planet? It being an actual play doesn’t negate people’s biggest actual complaint: lack of consequences! A thing that actually happened prominently, though not always and not always perfectly, in previous campaigns. It’s always nice to see the cast have a good time, but that doesn’t unexist flaws in a narrative. Being happy for a character being happy doesn’t stop me or anyone else from being critical of that ending if it doesn’t feel narratively satisfying.

5. Not gently, as mean as possible: you should either get a refund or go back to school because it appears you have trouble with reading comprehension, abstract thinking, and complex reasoning. You didn’t get your money’s worth, I’m afraid.

6. Looking at a bunch of people upset with how one of their favorite “live” shows has played out and basically saying “um, actually, this isn’t about YOU.” Is both dismissive and a massive dick move. And while you were likely targeting a certain brand of Entitled Crazy Fan, the way you went about it originally was just disjointed and vague enough to be easily read as a slide against large chunks of different opinions.

I’ll probably delete this later, I don’t relish in crashing out as much I like to think I would, but I already spent so much time typing so might as well send

i know some people are going to be upset by how much time vox machina and the mighty nein took up during this finale, so i want to say a couple of things

these campaigns have always been and will always be for the entertainment and enjoyment of matt and his players, first and foremost. their good time has always been and will always been more important than that of the audience, which has been invited in to watch something that existed before we even knew about it. we are of course entitled to our opinions about what we watch, but it's important to remember that those opinions will never, ever matter as much as those of the people around the table.

it is an unspeakable feat of storytelling, collaboration, creativity, and friendship for these people to have done what they just did. over ten years (well over, including the time they played pre-stream) of building a narrative that spanned decades and continents and planes and celestials bodies, of making decisions and seeing their consequences out to the fullest, of bringing to life characters that felt more genuine and real than anything one can find on the silver screen—this is the kind of expansive storytelling that marvel thought it was doing with the mcu. to be able to tell a story so powerful that it cannot reasonably contained within the confines of distinct d&d campaigns is a staggering accomplishment, and we're all lucky to bear witness to it.

it is no one else's fault if you only watched c3, or weren't caught up on c1/2 when you watched the finale, or if you didn't like c1/2 but did like c3. again, you're entitled to your opinions and to how you spend your time, but this story did not begin in jrusar, so it is unreasonable to expect it to end there.

no one, including you, benefits by being salty that these people were having fun. no one, including you, is made better by your dissatisfaction with how these people chose together to tell this story. i have read countless books and watched countless tv shows and films in my life, and none of the stories therein have been told exactly the way i would have told them, and that's what i love so much about being human. if i'd been at that table, of course i would have made different decisions, and of course you would have too. but we got to see these decisions, and these consequences, and the ephemeralness of that is so beautiful i could cry.

as i have i said eight billion times before, and will probably have to say eight billion times again, critical role is not a tv show. critical role is not a novel. critical role does not have a writer's room or a five-year plan. (well, matt might, but not in the moment.) critical role is a story that happens in the moment, a story built on matt's careful planning and the players' in-the-moment decisions and, of course, the rolls of the dice. if you are holding this kind of story to the narrative standards of something crafted for the sole purpose of entertaining an audience, you are always, always going to be disappointed.

[beets-are-not-green]

i just finished watching buffy s1-s7 for the first time and like. s6 is good. not perfect, but still. it deals in the most obvious way with these big issues that are so human, and it's so real that even the season's vilains are kind-of-regular humans. the way it focuses on the characters' relationships, the way they grow, the way they hurt each other, the way they deal with becoming adults, with trying to have some control on life, on themselves, on each other, the way they fail, the way they have to deal with the consequences of their actions in the end... it was so interesting that i was even willing to go along with what i thought were bad writing choices, like: ok, that's awful but you know what, sure, let's see where we're going. and then s7 happens lmfao

[pepprs]

ok hi. not to be stupid about this publicly once again but it’s 5:34 am [update it is now 5:53 am] and i have gotten absolutely HORRIBLE sleep tonight. first bc i was so stressed that i couldn’t fall asleep until 1:30am. then because my sister is sleeping in our room again (long story) which is good for her bc she’s making progress w her ocd but it means that she comes in with h the flashlight on after 2am and has to check the room and she leaves the bedroom door wide open which distorts the white noise from the sojnd machine which is right in front of my bed. and she’s like laughing at stuff on her phone too so all the subtleties of sound and light disrupt me and wake me up and throw me off. and also it’s freakishly hot so i woke up a couple times bc of that. and now im awake at 5:30ish after barely sleeping for 4 hours bc im stressed bc it’s Passover and my moms bday and im leaving work early today and tomorrow for the “””””Seder””””” (which again literally is not a seder it’s just dinner w my grandpa) and barely have time to get anything done at work and haven’t done anything for my mom and have to clean the house for my grandpa to come over and we literally don’t even have a dinner table yet likr idkw aht the fuck we’re going to do.. and also im fucking STARVING. because guess what!!!! we have to stop eating bread!!!! and i usually have 4 slices with avocado / guac on them before i go to sleep but there were only 4 slices left in the whole house so i had 2 so my brother will get to have the other 2 during the day. and my stomach is howling rn. and we have other things to eat like fruit and stuff but nothing that’s not going to throw me off.. like im not about to eat an orange at 5:30am it’s going to set my throat on fire with the acid this early in the morning. and we don’t have any snack foods in this house or like anything that can be made without having to prepare it for a while bc of our diet (lol). and we don’t have any flatbread or tortillas or whatever yet. so im going fucking crazy and feeling resentful abt passover again and wondering what the hell im going to do going into work and not being able to eat bagels for breakfast after not being able to eat my bedtime snack and being this hungry and stressed and miserable for a week on top of everything else. lol

[nostalgicmiscellaneous]

This fandom created a myth about Lady Whistledown. Sometimes i wonder if i watched the same show. Let me make myself clear: While Penelope has to tell Colin the truth, because she loves him and he deserves it, LW helped the Bridgertons a lot actually. It saved them to have Daphne married to a creep ( and see how Violet wanted people to talk to reach LW and spread), saved Colin from a loveless marriage with children that he didn't know anything about it and saved Eloise. Yes, it saved Eloise. Eloise created and kept pushing the situation in her reckless pursuit. Eloise also didn't think about the consequences of her action towards the people working for LW, didn't listen to Penelope, didn't think about the risk she was putting people at. And while i understand her anger in not knowing, had she been a better friend, many other things would be different, because she truly never paid attention to what Penelope feels or want, she molded Pen to be whom she wanted and be her audience. And then, she left Pen with the choice of losing all she built and suffer consequences or pick the less harmful option: to make Eloise's scandal about politics, not romantic and save them both, plus Theo. The real ruin for Eloise would've been her being caught with Theo, something that was bound to happen as she was not careful at all. Why should Pen sacrifice all for Eloise? Would any of you sacrifice all ( job, family and possibly your liberty) for a friend who caused the bloody situation? I'm no hypocrite, i know i wouldnt. Not to mention Eloise bravado, to Pen she would say she wants to challenge society and doesn't care about what they think...but folded the moment she received a frown from the Ton. Shall we see who are LW victims, people that suffered real consequences? Lord Beerbrock. That's it. Marina is married, despite her lies and deceit. Colin? Nothing as well, in fact, happier than ever. Eloise? A few weeks of ostracism and she's back without a problem, without a romantic entanglement to ruin her. One that she clearly didn't really thought was deep enough to face society. The Bridgertons have more to thank LW than to hate her. And Violet and Anthony, i bet your asses, do think so, and see it. And The Queen? Are you watching the show? Have you seen Charlotte's personality? That woman loves the whole game with LW. And She loves to take it all, to receive the laurels of that society. As long as she can make it look like the won, and she can, easily, by revealing or be involved in revealing who is LW. See the whole KatexEdwina, how she handled the Ton there.

Anyway, just wanted to say something because some people have dreamed a LW that doesn't exist at all. Created on their own minds a boogeyman that wasn't simply reporting the truth with witty opinions but fabricating stories and lies to ruin lives, and that's simply not true. Never happened. There was never a lie created there. Only the truth, even about herself, as Pen was often damaged by her column.

[daviesroyal]

Whenever I think about the sentiment that the Dragon Age games have declined since Origins, this is the kind of reasoning I come back to. 2 and Inquisition may have improved in some ways, mostly technical, but there's been a creeping hesitance to engage with the complexity of the world they built.

That's not to say I don't enjoy those games, or that I think they're somehow "unworthy" of being in the same franchise as Origins; 2 almost beats out Origins as my favorite DA game, and I actually enjoy the open world and expanded politics of Inquisition.

What bothers me is that, as the player character, you are given less and less agency to engage with the world. Inquisition is especially bad at this, and I keep saying that all the warning signs for Veilguard were in Inquisition. How much can you really push back and challenge companions? Why can't I interrogate Cullen about his past as a Templar instead of being given a couple vague lines and no further dialogue options? Why do I have to keep him as commander when he's obviously struggling with his addiction and even wants to leave? Why is it we only have a shallow conversation or two with Dorian about slavery, instead of constantly being able to bring it up like he needles Bull about the Qun? Why can't we ask Bull a lot more questions about the Qun? Why can't we challenge Vivienne's assertions about Circles, or the Dalish mages, things she says as absolute fact yet can clearly be disputed? Why can't we talk to Sera about her internalized racism, without being snide or dismissive or cruel? Why is it, when you discover the cure for tranquility with Cassandra, you don't even get to suggest that it should be given to the mages, especially if you know what the Occularum are?

I like that these are questions sparked at all, but the fact that as the player character I am not allowed to push, to keep asking, to explore this world, is off-putting after Origins. An RPG, in general, should not just allow but encourage you to engage with the world it has built.

Inquisition also had a lot of binary choices to make, even when it came to companions and determining complex solutions (looking at Cole's whole questline) whereas the previous two games offered a lot more nuance. There's multiple paths, with good and bad consequences, and sometimes you have to dig deeper to find a good solution - acting in haste can lead to poor outcomes. Inquisition tried to erase the complexity from choices, and that was exacerbated in Veilguard. I'm trying to think of a single decision in that game where you had more than two different outcomes. Sometimes (a lot of the time) it was the same outcome with different flavors. (The ending has three different flavors! Is Solas alone in the Fade, with Rook, or with a romanced Lavellan?)

I can't tell if Bioware was becoming increasingly aware of the kind of story they were telling, the kind of critical analysis of both their stories and their motivations as creators and as a studio they were opening themselves up to, and decided to make Veilguard as "uncritical" as possible - or if they genuinely thought this was what people wanted. Unchallenging, insubstantial fluff to escape from the dark world we live in.

Veilguard, to me, is the game equivalent of cotton candy. Dragon Age 4 deserved better than this.

i feel like all of my pondering and analyzing and criticizing veilguard over the past few months has actually truly given me a better understanding of what dragon age meant to me, what about it specifically was so meaningful, and why, as a result, veilguard felt so wrong. it took a while for me to figure it out. about three full months of relentless essay writing, actually. but i think if you had asked me a few years ago what the core of my love for dragon age was, whatever answer i gave would not have truly gotten to the root of it, because i think i had to experience the disappointment of veilguard to fully understand why i love dragon age. and ive realized that core is that i loved how the previous dragon age entries demand so much of the player, and deliberately prompt introspection and critical, often political, thought.

dragon age games have historically forced the player to be self-reflective and introspective about their worldview and beliefs. solas is obviously a fantastic example, as he was deliberately written to be a reflection of the player in order to prompt them to reflect on how they treat people, how our expectations of people influence their behavior, and how people are pushed to extremes and turned into monsters or saved by love and kindness. how do people become monsters? what drives them to blow up buildings or start rebellions or destroy the world as you know it? are they right or wrong? does it even matter? how did you contribute to this? are you innocent? it puts these insane, politically and morally charged situations in your face and forces you to confront them. slavery, a refugee crisis, poverty, class disparities, racism, foreign occupation, the list goes on, and you are not given the option to look away or be a bystander. you have to ACT. you have to choose, you have to make judgements, you have to take responsibility and explore your role in this world as someone with the capacity to act upon it, to make your will a reality, to fail, to make mistakes. i honestly can't think of any other video game that does this to the same extent? nor any media at all because the act of being IN the world as one of it's people through the act of role-playing is essential to how it provokes this experience in the player. its ballsy. they deliberately try to make you uncomfortable. these games are full of liars, deceivers, betrayers. the games themselves lie to you. its character try to deceive you. did you catch it? or were you fooled? what else might you be fooled by? who else might be lying to you? in the game? in real life? and then you get to play it again knowing the end, and what the game prompts changes with your new knowledge. now it asks, do you forgive them? what makes someone worthy of forgiveness? where do you draw the line? what do you think?

i dont think i realized until recently how impactful this was for me considering how i first got into dragon age at 16 years old. i dont think i had experienced anything up to that point that would put a situation like judging a war criminal who ordered the deaths of children or another war criminal who just left me to die and orchestrated a near-coup or a traumatized terrorist who just blew up a church right in my face, and said MAKE A DECISION. and i didnt know it at the time, but looking back i can see how valuable it was for me at that age to have what was effectively an avenue of exploration and self-expression of all of these moral and political issues that i was grappling with as a young adult. i played inquisition for the first time just months before i voted in my first presidential primary. i already had a political consciousness at this point, but it was nonetheless new and vulnerable and still blossoming into something more concrete. inquisition, then, almost provided a sort of political, moral and personal sandbox for me from ages 16-20 to better help me understand myself in relation to the world. the RPG-ness allowed me to put myself into these situations - like the mage-templar war and its metaphor for mass incarceration and police brutality - while i was also simultaneously grappling with and trying to understand these issues in real life. having dragon age to help me further unpack my own beliefs and conception of these issues was undeniably impactful. it provided a space, through a narrative i enjoyed and cared about, to make choices and judgement calls and better understand who i was, and what felt right to me. it asked, "what do you think?"

veilguard lacks this. completely. and lets be clear that the previous games did not always do a perfect job. many of these depictions are messy and harmful and problematic, but they at least, by extension of their own existence in a narrative that forces you to THINK and JUDGE and DECIDE, give me the space and opportunity to judge them as messy, as problematic, as harmful. i can confidently say that i think da2 is too sympathetic to the templars as an organization because the fact that da2 presents me with so many narrative conflicts regarding the templar organization allows me to not just make in-game decisions and play as a staunch advocate for mage freedom and circle abolition, but to form opinions on the game itself by extension. i can confidently say that i believe the qunari's portrayal is islamophobic because the game has prompted me so many times; what do i think about the qunari? what do i think about the oppression of the elves? what do i think about dorian being a seemingly good person but defending the practice of slavery? who should rule orzammar; the progressive asshole or the conservative traditionalist? do i forgive loghain? do i forgive anders? do i forgive solas? this in-world critical thinking about issues in thedas leads to meta critical thinking. further questions naturally follow -> what message did the writers intend to send through anders? how can i notice the echoes of how this story came into fruition in the shadow of 9/11? what do solas's endings tell me about the writers view of retributive punishment? how is bioware's portrayal of the dalish, as inspired by indigenous north americans, reflective of deep-seated anti-indigenous canadian sentiment? why did the writers stop prompting these hard questions at all in veilguard? did they only like it when it was about characters, not when it led to critical thinking about them and the company as a whole? through these processes of in-world interrogation, i am inevitably invited to analyze the effectiveness of their narrative portrayals and the writing itself. perhaps this is why dragon age is so famous for its discourse lol.

ive said before that im not sure that veilguard could ever have been as impactful for me as the previous games, partly because when you are 16 everything is more impactful because your brain is an eager sponge, unless it did something that really resonated with me as an adult. but what it should have been, at the very least, is something that could have been as impactful and formative on a current 16 year old that sees a gif on tumblr and decides to check out the game, as inquisition was to me 10 years ago. and im sure there are teenagers and younger adults out there playing this game and loving it and loving the characters and the world and thinking its great, good fun. thats great. however it fundamentally cannot have the same profound, developmentally catalytic experience it had on me because it simply does not challenge the player. it does not prompt them to question their own beliefs and the power structures within their lives. it does not prompt them to reflect on the political narratives they may have been fed all their lives. it does not confront them with the sorts of topics that get books on banned lists in florida and force them to bear witness, to think deeper, to feel guilt or horror at the outcome of your own poorly-made decision, to make moral judgements, to make mistakes, and to live with the consequences.

i think i now understand why veilguard was so disappointing to me and ultimately would be a failure in my eyes no matter if i enjoyed the combat or the exploration or whatever other shiny coat of paint sits atop it. veilguard does not ask much of you. it does not prompt any sort of introspection or interrogation of your presently held beliefs. it does not demand anything from the player except to dodge at the right moment. this is a fundamental, core departure from what made me fall in love with dragon age in the first place. if you love dragon age because you want "fantasy escapism" and fun characters to smooch, then i am happy for you. but i would remind you that can find fantasy escapism all over the steam library - farming sims, cozy games, a witch looking for her cat in the alps, etc. what you cannot find are games that are willing and brave enough to challenge and provoke the player into a better, more thorough understanding of themselves in relation to our world and it's many, complex and daunting political and moral issues. to have lost such a thing, when media like this has become so few and far between, and during a time when we need it more than ever, is a devastating loss.

[cameatslemons]

mouthwashing post. jimmy is a raging narcissist and im tired of people trying to give him benefit of the doubt. his inability to see two feet beyond what immediately concerns him dooms everyone on the tulpar, and even in the end, he only really cares about himself.

big list of all his narcisstic bullshit below bc im here to motherfucking prove it (mouthwashing spoilers of course)

most obviously: everything is a personal attack on him. EVERYTHING. you can see it most clearly at the birthday party; while everyone else is understandably freaking out about being laid off, jimmy starts telling curly off and insulting both him and everyone else at the table, as if being laid off is a personal attack on jimmy specifically. it doesn’t matter that anya has nothing to go back to, that swansea’s life is thrown away- jimmy is the ONLY victim here, apparently. curly is personally responsible for getting laid off, in his eyes.

i don’t actually know the words for this but the way he’s constantly going “i have to do EVERYTHING around here”- again, feeling like its a personal attack to be asked anything at all. anya asks him to take care of curly because her entire fucking life is falling apart, its her end of days, but somehow shes the villain for struggling.

also the general antagonization of anya. she’s extremely competent for the hand she was dealt! shes too poor to attend med school yet shes very knoqledgable in medication and wound care! and yeah no shit shes struggling now, someone she cared deeply about is suffering immensely and now the ship is being “run” by a man who assaulted her. no fucking shit shes breaking down. but jimmy makes it clear time and time again that this is somehow her fault, all this shit of “shouldn’t nurses EARN their titles?” while she’s having a mental breakdown.

similarly, swansea being villainized for holding the cryopod for daisuke and killing him. like, i get it, but jimmy’s whole thing of saying he can fix daisuke is… c’mon man. he’s a hero to himself, he “always” fixes things the same way he “fixed” the ship, and he will fix daisuke and claim heroism even though it’s very clear nothing else can be done for him.

“someday you’ll thank me” while forcing curly to eat his own leg. the incredible confidence that he is in the right even when literally torturing someone.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: the final scene with curly burning. jimmy doesn’t earnestly believe he has anything to be sorry for. even when apologizing to curly he says “we can BOTH be heroes!” despite everything, he still thinks he’s in the right. he STILL thinks he’s a hero, because he’s right, he’s ALWAYS right, surely. he can apologize and grovel all he wants but in the end he still thinks he’s the hero of this story; he doesn’t genuinely think he has anything to right, he’s only doing this to be freed of consequence. and/or believes a simple “sorry” is enough, that it can fix completely ruining the lives of four people with his own inferiority complex.

i do think the choice to put curly in the pod instead of himself is the only time he recognizes his own guilt, if any. maybe it’s realizing that he DOES need something more than a simple “sorry” to even begin to try to fix things, maybe it’s that he thinks this will cement him even further as a hero. even then, does this fix anything? all it’s doing is making curly suffer more. is this actually a good thing?

to him, he’s the hero here. he always is. crashing the ship is a heroic thing, putting all his crewmates through hell is a heroic thing. all because something nobody can control is somehow a personal attack on jimmy.

not to mention all the “hallucinations” he has- it’s what he thinks should happen, it’s what he wants to hear. curly still calling him a friend, the dead corpses of his crewmates praising him, even in the final cutscene with curly burning where he says “no, YOU take the pod”. none of it’s real. it’s just what jimmy thinks is “right”. despite everything, he thinks everyone should thank and praise him, because he can do no wrong.

conclusion: jimmy is a narcisstic piece of shit.

[luna-azzurra]

Writing a Morally gray character

Think about their backstory, what shaped them into who they are? What do they believe in? And, most importantly, what pushes them to get out of bed every morning and keep going? These characters aren’t simple good or bad. They’re caught in the middle, in that murky, complicated space between black and white. That’s where they get interesting because they’re constantly wrestling with themselves, trying to figure out the right choice, or if the “right” choice even exists for them.

You need to show this internal battle. Imagine your character being torn between what they believe is morally right and what they actually want. This is where the real drama comes in, it’s like watching them juggle their principles with their desires in real-time. They’ll mess up, and they’ll make decisions that are sometimes questionable, but that’s what makes them human and relatable. One way to really highlight their complexity is by putting them in situations where there’s no clear answer. You know, those moments in life where everything’s kind of a mess, and you’re stuck trying to figure out what the hell you’re supposed to do? Your character should face situations like that. These gray areas create tension because readers won’t know which direction the character will go, and honestly, your character might not know either.

And don’t forget, growth is a huge part of writing a morally gray character. People aren’t static, they change based on what happens to them, and your character should too. Maybe they start off with a strong sense of morality but, over time, that starts to shift. Or maybe they start with shaky ethics and slowly become a better person as they learn from their mistakes. Growth can also go the other way, they could spiral downward, giving in to darker impulses. Either way, they need to evolve, just like people do in real life. That’s what keeps the story fresh and unpredictable. The last thing you want is a character that stays the same the whole way through.

Also, please, no stereotypes. A morally gray character doesn’t have to be a brooding anti-hero with a tragic past (unless that’s your vibe, but even then, switch it up). Give them quirks that make them unique. Maybe they have unexpected motivations, like they’re doing something shady for a cause they genuinely believe in, or they’ve got a weird sense of humor that throws people off. Whatever it is, make sure they feel like an individual, not just a copy-paste character we’ve all seen a million times.

Even when your character makes decisions that aren’t exactly clean-cut or heroic, the reader still needs to understand why. Show their vulnerabilities, why they doubt themselves, why they hesitate, and why they ultimately make the choices they do. It’s all about making them relatable, even when they’re walking that fine line between right and wrong. People might not always agree with them, but they should at least be able to see where they’re coming from.

And remember, every choice your character makes should have consequences. They don’t exist in a bubble. Their decisions should ripple out and affect not only them but the people around them. Maybe they make a selfish decision, and it ends up hurting someone they care about, or they try to do the right thing, and it blows up in their face. One last thing, just because your character lives in that gray area doesn’t mean they don’t have any sense of right or wrong. They might have their own personal code they follow, even if it doesn’t line up with society’s morals. Maybe they justify their actions in a way that makes sense to them, even if other people wouldn’t agree. It’s all about exploring that space where they’re not totally good, but not totally bad either. That’s where things get really interesting.

Think about where your character is going. Is their journey going to push them to become a better version of themselves? Will they fall back into old patterns and never really change? Or will they stay stuck in that moral gray zone, constantly torn between doing what’s right and doing what feels right for them?

[nobodyfamousposts]

Scarlet Lady Top 10 Favorite Characters: Number 10

For @zoe-oneesama

Okay, I realized as I was writing these that there is way way WAY too much to each of these and why to be able to put them all into one post, so I'm breaking them down into individual essays focusing on each one to keep them palatable.

So without further ado....

Number 10: EVERYONE

Yeah, I know it may be cheating but at this point it was the only choice I could make.

I came to regret making this list, specifically because I couldn’t seem to make up my mind as far as who all would be on it. I reread the entire series. I kept switching people in and out as I was reminded of characters or scenes I loved. And I came to a realization that there is no character in the whole of this series I didn’t enjoy to some extent that they didn't deserve some love in this list and I kind of wish I could have added all of them just to give them all some spotlight.

Yes, it is partly because everyone is vastly improved compared to Canon. But as I reread the series, it came to mind that if Canon didn’t exist and I didn’t have the comparison between the characters, I still very much would have loved this series and everyone in it.

Cause and Effect Exist

It's important to have a setting in which the characters and their actions make sense for the world they live in. When the setting is supposed to be modern day earth, we need the people to be able to show that they are capable of surviving in it on a day to day basis without being so massively incompetent that they would do something like accidentally ingesting poison. Or forgetting how to breathe.

I would think it would be obvious, but sometimes Canon makes me wonder. Which is never a good look for a show that is supposed to have some level of seriousness and involve superheroes.

Here’s the thing Canon can’t seem to get: when a majority of the things that go wrong in a plot are because of everyone having to be stupid to make the plot work, you have a problem with the writing. Changing the material in a story so that younger people can enjoy it does NOT mean dumbing down the characters and throwing in arbitrary lessons with no real reason to them. Even if the show itself is geared towards kids, you can’t treat the audience like they’re stupid.

In Scarlet Lady, the people aren’t stupid.

Silly, yes. Wrong, often. Overdramatic, definitely. But while they may make stupid choices sometimes, they aren’t so dumb that anyone should have concerns about their ability to function at a higher level than an overcaffinated 2 year old.

They’re fooled initially the way many of us would be with a biased story that hits the news first. Oblivious to the problems in a situation that they logically wouldn’t have much direct insight into. Prone to making mistakes and incorrect judgement the way that anyone would. That's normal. That's expected.

But they’re not so incapable as to forget things that happen right in front of them between one day and the next. Or even between one scene and the next.

Things carry over. We see cause and effect. We see consequences—bad and good. And those consequences extend not only for the episode or season but for the entire series.

Aurore KNOWs Alec cheated her before and maintains a tight control over him and prevents more of his antics.

Adrien and Alya maintain a cold attitude towards Lila for some time after her reveal as a liar. And it even remains a point against her as used by Chloe as herself and as Scar to discount what she says.

The boys of the class remember Adrien’s “love letter to Marigold” and try to win him her merch because they’re bros like that. 

Adrien himself remembers the instances of his dad being a massive prick and instead of being surprised and “sad boi uwuwu” each time it happens like it’s supposed to be a surprise that the massive prick would choose to be a prick, he very clearly moves through the stages of grief to the point of a sort of acceptance that involves planning around and even for him.

Gabriel’s horrible parenting and general lack of concern for Adrien or his wellbeing as he ends up a casualty of various akuma attacks was played off for laughs when such incidents occurred. Then they were brutally called out against him in the Finale as a way to counter his claims of doing everything for Adrien’s sake. And the big reveal of the Birthday Scarf…utilized in the last way anyone would have wanted.

And Chloe is perhaps the biggest example as her antics ARE NOT forgotten or ignored by anyone. The classmates still interact with Chloe and are relatively nice to her, but they don’t just forget that she’s treated them horribly. They don’t act surprised when she does anything horrible. Nor does anyone just laugh it off or excuse it as “just who she is”. We see follow up to her behavior—the class fully expecting her to cause trouble and actively try to plan around it. People calling her out on past behaviors. And even bigger consequences as time goes on. Such as Adrien breaking off the friendship. And a blink and you miss it fridge logic moment in Ikari Gozen when you realize that when they said she was banned from all future Gabriel-involved competitions, they meant it.

The fact that by the time the big reveal happened that Chloe was Scarlet Lady, no one was shocked.

Story-wise, this is showing the passage of time and the effect the events of the story are having. It’s showing that there is lasting impact and that what happens to the characters matters.

Meta-wise, this is Zoe rewarding us for paying attention.

Continuity exists in Scarlet Lady. Time exists. The people exist. When anyone does anything, you get the sense that they aren’t operating in a vacuum. The things they do matter. There are consequences. There is an impact. And if there is an impact in the story, there will be an impact on the audience.

Which leads to…

Character Depth/Character Growth

Usually in TV shows of this nature, if there ARE character arcs for the side characters, they only occur over the course of a single episode devoted to focusing on them before moving on elsewhere. 

Canon didn’t give us that much at all in favor of having every episode that should focus on other characters learning and growing instead forcing Marinette to be wrong in some way and learn an arbitrary lesson that often would have better served for someone else.

In Scarlet Lady, the arcs we get are impressive for all that they’re relatively unobtrusive. They aren’t big. They aren’t world-ending. And the thing is, most change in life isn’t. It can just FEEL that way.

Like the way it felt for Kim when he first found out Ondine liked him and then had his confession to her screwed up.

And the way it felt for Kagami when she lost that first match against Adrien.

Then there’s the way it felt for Chloe when she was dismissed by her mother, had her popularity go downhill, and ended up losing her Miraculous.

…or the way it felt for Adrien when he discovered his dad was Hawk Moth.

The reactions we witness are in a great part due to actions outside of the characters’ control, but are ultimately a result of the experiences they have had and the ways they have changed as a result.

The question becomes: are the characters that we meet at the beginning pretty much identical to how they are at the end? Is the world?

The answer in Scarlet Lady is no.

Whether because the characters themselves change or our perception of them does, we can see that they have all undergone some sort of events that create a difference between the start and end points.

Not all of them HAVE to undergo some big emotional arc. Not all of them NEED to. But the characters still mostly go through some sort of growth by the end that I feel make them stronger and healthier people.

You’ve got the big life-altering changes like Lila and Sabrina.

You’ve got the little changes like Nino and Ivan.

You’ve even got the most minuscule, beginning stages of change in Chloe.

You’ve got growth that creates such perfect setup with Mylene when she starts off scared and traumatized by how things went with Stoneheart then is the one who confronts him in the end. And the parallel between the finale and the beginning when she returns him to normal by kissing him just like they did in that first episode to change him back then, too! (Just….GOD, I CANNOT GET OVER THIS!)

You’ve got them reaching out and making friends and relating to people they hadn’t before.

And by the end of it all, we get characters who feel like people rather than props.

They don’t all have to change. They don’t necessarily need to go through an entire emotional arc and back again. They just need to be part of the world they’re in.

Nino doesn’t just pop into existence when Adrien or Alya need someone to interact with. Kagami isn’t just a non-horrible or non-evil love rival for Adrien or a stepping stool for him to “practice“ at being in a relationship before it’s time for him to try the “real thing” with his endgame pairing. Luka isn’t just a decent guy who is the only actual form of support for the female lead and yet only lacking that precious “male lead” title or all around just not “Adrien enough” to fill the role.

Adrien isn’t just a “sad boy” meant to be a main love interest, Villain’s Morality Pet, and the one everyone idolizes and chases after just cuz he’s the male lead and that’s how you show he’s desirable I guess. Marinette isn’t the atlas keeping the story alive because no one else is apparently capable of learning lessons and changing, or even just the bare basics of functioning as individuals. Chloe isn’t just there to be horrible for no reason and get away with it so she can continue to be horrible until the writers suddenly need her to be sympathetic.

And the rest of the classmates aren’t just some Greek chorus there to fill the background.

We see them interact. We see them making jokes or jabs. We see them even…*gasp* having different opinions!

And on something as major and life-controlling as feelings about the “Hero of the City” no less! Why, that’s the sort of thing that would break up friendships and determine who you can sit next to at the cafeteria! The horror! The scandal!

And…oh hey. This puts the characters in different groups. It links them with characters other their Canonically designated pairings and groups. This lets them disagree on things and not need to vilify any of them. This creates implications that add depth to the story and to the people in it.

The characters can disagree without being enemies. They can be wrong without having to be evil. They can make mistakes without having to be stupid. And they can change and grow—both for better and worse.

And we see both and in different ways. SO many different ways.

Adrien goes from excited and impulsive to buckling under the forced responsibility and weight of a partner who hinders more than she helps.

Lila goes from selfishly bad and self-serving to selfish but friendly with better direction of her talents in a less self-serving way.

And Chloe just goes from selfish and bad to selfish and worse..

I mean, it says something that the combination of Lila’s growth and Chloe’s fall from grace resulted in Hawk Moth being unable to use Lila as a tool for his Heroes Day plot like he originally intended.

The key is that whether they necessarily grow or become better people, these characters are still IMPACTED by the events around them and AFFECTED as a natural result of the world they live in. 

You can’t help but feel for them in some way as a result. It’s part of why I love them.

The other part of why I love them is a bit more epic though…

Crowning Moments of Awesome

If there’s one thing I love, it’s seeing characters be awesome. I love it when characters get to be awesome. I would love to see more of it. Especially when the ones involved are characters you wouldn’t normally expect or get to see have a chance to shine.

And it’s when you see these characters be awesome that you really get the sense that yes, this character would work as a hero.

Seeing Max help against Robustus. Seeing Kim help against Odine. Alix stepping in during Pharaoh, calling out her brother’s fan fiction, and helping the heroes escape the security system at the Lourve. Alya stepping in during Copycat to clue Chat in to what’s going on and later keeping Anansi distracted to keep her away from Chat while he’s trapped. Rose kicking Nightmare!Chat in the face to defend Marinette even when she’s on the run from her own nightmares in Sandboy. Luka leading groups twice to stepping in and helping the heroes deal with akumas. Nathaniel standing up for Marinette and Sabrina when they’re accused in Rogercop and then helping the heroes in Reverser.

These little moments of support make such a big different and really make it make sense that the heroes would trust these people with magical jewelry to help them in battle.

And the little moments of characters being petty or strong or smart or turning the tables or just showing off what they’re capable of. Even without superpowers.

Adrien getting petty revenge for Nino and finding a tactic to counter Gabriel in the future.

The Police Force in Rogercop just saying “Nope” to obeying an obvious akuma. 

Zoe manipulating akumas twice to help the heroes. Her two Reasons You Suck Speeches to her mom and Bustier.

Every instance of payback that Tikki gets against Chloe.

Everyone in the Finale. Just…EVERYONE in the Finale. The characters who manage to avoid akumatization by either spotting the flaws in the illusion or refusing to give in to fear and even protecting others. Nora smacking any akuma that enters the home. Claudie pulling off Power Mom and ordering Max to stop attacking the city then helping to calm him down. Prince Ali and Juleka freeing Rose by kissing her! Chris, Ella, Etta, and Manon saving Mylene! Mylene saving Ivan with a kiss in a direct callback to how they first got together in Stoneheart! (Yes, I am still stuck on that!) Ondine saving Kim! Lila and Sabrina saving Alix! Luka facing Riposte alone and unarmed and then Kitty Section saving Kagami! ALL of the Heroes making a final comeback to help take down Hawk Moth for good! Just—AAAAAH!

How could Miraculous have peaked with this in Season 2 when this is Grand Finale material? Because there are few things more awesome than getting to see ALL the characters the heroes met and befriended and helped throughout the course of the story stepping up at the final battle to help take the Big Bad down!

Like…can we just take a moment to appreciate how everyone gets a chance to stand out in some way? Not all of them necessarily good, exactly (looking at you Andre). But still stand out and be memorable. Even characters who didn’t originally get much focus. Especially characters who were originally functioning as cardboard cutouts to fill a scene.

Anyone remember Aurore? How for the FIRST akuma in the pilot of the series and one who is quite frankly the most interesting and noteworthy, we don’t really get to see her again except in the background.

In Scarlet Lady, we got to actually look in to the contest and how she lost as well as the aftermath. She wasn’t some arrogant showoff who deserved to lose to the “sweet down to earth rival”, she was a girl who legitimately tried her best and had valid reason to be upset. Seeing her get revenge on Alec for cheating and humiliating her on live TV was well worth it.

Or how about the Photographer? Just there to take photos of Adrien in the park for a photo shoot or be the school photographer, but otherwise has no personality and is only remembered for his weird “spaghetti” line.

In Scarlet Lady, his role is two-fold. He acts as a sort of supporter for Adrien in his crush. Taking really good pictures of him being happy with the girl he likes. Taking more class photos at the behest of this girl for the sake of a friend who missed out on the class picture. And then there’s his OTHER role as a sort of antagonist to Chloe. He becomes one of the only ones in the early seasons willing and capable of dismissing her tantrums.

They’re both given more character. They get moments to stand out and BE awesome. So is everyone.

EVERYONE. From the classmates and big named characters we see regularly to the side characters who only appear once or twice. They all get some good scenes and focus that give them their own identities. All of them are memorable. None of them can really be ignored or forgotten. And part of what made making this list so difficult was that I found myself getting attached to pretty much everyone as I came across each of them that I couldn’t quite make up my mind.

Everyone in this fic has done something to make me happy and warrant my approval. Even the characters I normally wouldn’t like at all had their moments to shine and elicit an “okay, that was cool” from me.

Thus I grant this spot to everyone. To all the characters I don’t get the chance to mention. To all the ones I like albeit somewhat less than others. To all the ones I know are horrible but can’t help but like regardless. To all the ones I fought with myself for THREE MONTHS over which one would get this spot.

I love all of them.

[championari]

So I’m constantly thinking about Charles and how he could eventually meet Edwin with his feelings.

Here’s something I realized: Charles, despite constantly talking about things he miss, things he wants, he actually has a complicated relationship with desire as a concept.

How I would put it is by taking Supernatural as an example. There’s an episode in Season 5 where the boys meet Famine, a horseman of the apocalypse. However, Dean is not at all affected by him. It’s because due to being the older brother, and a Hunter, Dean was never allowed to consider acting on or even having desire for anything.

You can see where I’m going with this. Charles, like Dean, doesn’t actually believe he should want anything, due to “not being good enough”.

This is something actually touched on subtly in the show through the acting. When Niko says, “I know what it’s like to want something you can’t have.” Edwin directly looks at The Cat King’s bracelet, while Charles stares off into space. When Tragic Mick describes Angie’s light as enforcing a sense of yearning, Edwin looks at Charles, while again, Charles looks off blankly (can’t access screenshots right now). Edwin knows what he wants but is scared of it, while Charles doesn’t know what he wants because he can’t allow himself to consider it. This gives an entirely new meaning to Charles’ hatred of the Cat King. A supernatural entity who describes his kingdom as being about “want and pleasure”. Thomas is the encapsulation of everything Charles was never allowed to have. Charles chases after things that he knows he can’t have, romancing a living girl despite knowing she will eventually leave. Charles can’t consider returning Edwin’s feelings because that would mean he’s been running away from what’s been in front of him the whole time. That what he wanted was always there, at his lowest point, when he thought he deserved it least.

Returning Edwin’s feelings means he was already enough. And Charles can’t imagine that yet.

While I would obviously adore an interaction between Charles and Desire of The Endless, ultimately I don’t think it would do anything. Like Dean, Charles might be completely unaffected by them because he’s spent most of his existence building walls around his desires. Edwin was completely blindsided by Thomas because he never even considered having to think about Desire due to having no attraction to women and that being the dominant narrative of his time. Charles pursues Crystal because he still wants to feel like he has a chance at “normal life” (which as I said is self-punishment by throwing himself at something he knows he can’t have). To accept that he’s in love with Edwin would mean no longer pursuing a living person. Edwin would be it for him, which he kind of already gets but it hasn’t fully sunk in yet. Just like his death

There's also this exchange that drives me nuts:

"You gave up tranquil eternity…for your friend?" "Does that sound like someone who belongs in Hell?"

THIS. MAKES. ME. INSANE. Because Charles, like he always does when confronted with his own wants, completely avoids it. He doesn't respond to The Night Nurse's obvious confusion as to why he ran from Death, and instead turns the conversation back to Edwin. He makes it all about what Edwin deserves, not what Charles saw in Edwin that led him to make that choice. You could say this is practical as time is of the essence, but I think that's the point. Charles throws away the chance to explain his viewpoint on their first meeting, the consequences of his choice to run from Death with a boy he just met and knew for a few hours, and instead remains single-minded on Edwin's safety. Like when Edwin reasonably questioned, "Why are you getting angry?" when he began freaking out over Thomas getting close to Edwin, he says nothing.

There's just so much happening in that head that I can't stop thinking about.

[yelenasbraid]

the one I run to — joe burrow

summary — you’re out with your friends when you start to notice someone’s been watching you.

warnings — fem!reader, protective!joe, creepy guy, some suggestive comments, fluff, language, names used for friends’ names ( so sorry if i use yours! )

requested by — anon <3

YOU LOVED COOLER WEATHER. the soft breeze through your hair, the big sweaters and the hats. it brought back memories of college, of friends and the sweet times you had. those same college friends came up to see you, and you couldn’t be more excited.

“you literally haven’t aged,” one of your friends, cassandra, laughed as you sat down at a table. the restaurant you chose was a cute spot, warm lights dangled from the ceiling while the smell of wood filled your nostrils. it was one of your favorite places around town.

“cass, it’s been four years,” you defended, scooting in your chair.

“still, i feel like the stress of being a WAG would get the grey hairs going,” cass joked, earning an eye roll from you.

“i think i see some already,” your other friend, courtney, commented, going to point out said grey hairs. you smacked her hand away.

“you both are bullies. did you come up to ohio just to bully me?” you asked jokingly, making both girls laugh. both girls were your roommates at one point, and after that the three of you became fast friends. you did everything together in college, so graduating, knowing you were parting ways, made it ten times harder.

flashback

you embraced the two of them, tears stinging your eyes. you didn’t care about your makeup at this point; the three of you were going to be parting ways for who knows how long.

“you better text me,” courtney wiped her eyes as she playfully shoved you, “especially with you dating the golden boy,”

“oh hush,” you laughed, wrapping her in another hug. leaving would be the hardest thing for you. those girls showed you good people existed, that you were worthy of friendship. they were apart of you, and now it felt like time was ripping them away.

“we’ve gotta have like an annual catch up or something,” cass sniffled, pulling away from the embrace.

“you won’t be able to get rid of us,” you reassured.

end of flashback

you felt whole again with them there. this wasn’t to say that you weren’t friends with some of the WAGs on the bengals or that joe wasn’t enough. he was, and you were friends with some of the WAGs. you and jess, sam’s fiancée, were particularly close. it was just different with friends you’ve known for a lot longer.

you ordered your drinks and then your food choices.

“so, give me the tea,” courtney spoke, sipping on her wine.

“what tea is there?” you asked her. while you and joe kept your lives pretty private, everyone knew you were together. everyone knew that joe was absolutely smitten with you.

“oh come on, you’re dating joe burrow. there’s obviously some tea. and where’s that ring?”

“he hasn’t proposed yet,”

“imma beat that boy’s ass,” cass muttered, causing you to choke on your drink. you had no idea what was in joe’s mind, but you’ve had the marriage talk. you’ve talked about getting married and that you were meant to get married. he just hasn’t put a ring on it, yet.

catching up with them was always special. cass told you about her husband and her 3 year old at home. courtney told you about her business and the cute guy who works next to her. you shared struggles, the things that caused you to stumble. you had the opportunity to lift each other up, to fill each other’s cups in the time that you had.

after you’ve had your fill, three drinks in with a full belly, the three of you figured it was time to leave. you didn’t want to hold up the restaurant any longer, even if you guys didn’t want to leave.

“don’t freak out,” courtney started, which consequently unsettled your stomach.

“what?”

“there’s a guy who’s been staring at you for the past 5 minutes,” she whispered to you, concern furrowing her brow. you were used to people staring at you, especially since you were dating joe. people wanted to ask you questions, and they weren’t always of innocent intent.

you turn and meet eyes with the guy, who’s sitting by himself, a drink in front of him. he makes no move to break eye contact with you, but he does wink at you. it unsettled you, causing your stomach to bubble with anxiety. you didn’t like his expression or what he was insinuating.

“he’s probably just a fan. he shouldn’t follow us out,” you told them. you were comforting yourself, but your gut told you a different story. it told you that this guy had other intentions and he wasn’t going to leave you alone.

you pack up your things, pay the bill, and fill your mouth with the last of your drink before walking out. you flicked your eyes back over to the man again, who had moved closer to you. he was still staring at you, his eyes flicking over your body. he was checking you out, and it made you very uncomfortable. you shivered, walking out of the restaurant. before you left for dinner, you liked your outfit. it was cute, it was comfortable, and you felt confident in it. now, you tugged at the sleeves of your shirt, worried about any exposed skin.

the three of you gather in front of a window into the restaurant, a warm glow cast on your faces. you still felt eyes on you, the prickling sensation on the back of your neck confirming such. this was different, you knew that. you also knew that you parked in a different area than your friends did. that fact alone tightened your chest and labored your breathing.

you’d be fine. you could handle yourself.

“you ok?” courtney asked you, snapping you out of your trance.

“yeah, yeah. he’s just really freaking me out,” you admitted to them. courtney looked in the window, catching the guy who was staring at you. she made a face at him, breaking the eye contact he had with her. you couldn’t help but laugh, shaking your head.

“needed a little embarrassment,” she shrugged. you hoped she was right. even though you were in a happy relationship, it didn’t stop other guys from hitting on you. it didn’t stop other guys from ogling, from making sleazy comments. it didn’t stop them from denying reality, wanting you to be theirs. you hoped that this guy in particular just needed to be told to shove off.

the three of you started walking down the street. the sun was setting, golden hues lighting your way. you guys stayed together, laughing and giggling as you went. your eyes caught movement, and you turned your head to see the man from earlier walking on the sidewalk across from you. it had to be a coincidence. you didn’t say anything, chalking it up to be paranoia. you were with friends. joe was a phone call away. you’d be ok.

you take out your phone and unlock it, hovering a finger over joe’s contact. you decided against calling him, at least for now. you didn’t need to bother him with this right now. you reached their parking lot, and you looked back, seeing no sign of him. you let out a breath of air.

“it was so good seeing you,” you chirped, feeling in a much better mood. you hugged each of them before they departed to their cars. the deck you parked in was right across the street.

“you good to walk there by yourself?” courtney called from her car. you contemplated taking her up on her implied offer, but you shook your head.

“i’m ok, thanks. i’ll call joe while i walk over,” you reassured her. she smiled, getting into her car, and driving off. you were met with silence again. you watched your friends leave, and as your eyes followed their cars, you saw him again. your heart caught in your throat, your breath hitching.

this is how crime documentaries started.

you pulled out your phone again, not hesitating to call joe. your breath picked up, watching the guy down the street from you. he was leaning against the wall, lighting a cigarette. based off of the lighting of the fire hitting his face, he was white. he was wearing dark clothes and had dark hair. you kept those physical descriptions in your mind, just in case.

“baby?” you heard joe’s voice on the other side of the phone, grounding you.

“hey! i’m walking over to the parking deck and wanted to call you,” you explained, maybe a little too brightly. you started towards the crosswalk, which would make the walk to the parking deck a tad longer. you stole a look at the guy, and he’d put out his cigarette and started after you.

“are you ok?” he asked you. joe knew that you sounded off; something was up.

“um,” you started, glancing back as you crossed the street, seeing the mystery guy pick up the pace, “i need you,” your voice shook with the realization you were being followed. ruffles were heard on the other side of the phone, which meant silence.

“joe?”

“i’m on the way, just keep walking to the parking deck, i’ll be there in 15 minutes,” he informed you. he slipped on some shoes, grabbed his keys, and walked into the garage. he didn’t have to ask, you didn’t have to explain. he heard the shakiness of your voice, and that alone threw him into overdrive. no one messed with his woman, no one got away with scaring her.

he got into the car, opening the garage, and pulled out. all while on the phone with you.

“wait 15 minutes? isn’t the restaurant like 30 from the house?” you asked, walking into the parking deck. at least it was lit, but it didn’t ease the sickly feeling in your stomach. you turned back, watching as the guy just entered the parking deck. he wasn’t making it subtle.

“30 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever. if i get pulled i’ll sweet talk the cops out of a ticket,” he informed as he gassed down the street. his hand wrung against the steering wheel, his mind running a million miles an hour. he might even make it in 10 minutes.

“oh well that’s comforting,” you told him as you disappeared up the stairs. you skipped steps, reaching level 4. it was then you heard the door open and close. you bolted through the level 4 door, panting, your heart in your throat.

“joe, please hurry,” you’re begging, your mind coming up with escape routes and hiding places. that car is big enough to hide you. there’s a pillar over there that could keep you. there’s another stairwell on the other end.

“i’m coming baby, just hang tight for me, ok?” he hated hearing you sound so scared, he hated all of it. his anger boiled, his jaw working as he turned onto the highway. why did men think it’s fun to scare women? why did they think it was ok, that it meant they were interested? why did they get off on their fear?

“just stay on the phone with me, please?” you asked him, trying to eye your car. of course you forgot where you parked. you heard the door squeak, and your nerves lit up with adrenaline.

“i promise, babe. i’m here,” he assured you. you swallowed and parked yourself next to a random car, taking out your fob as if to unlock it. you wouldn’t let this man know what you drove.

“he’s on the same level as me,” you breathed shakily, trying and failing to keep your composure. you’ve only read of this sort of thing happening, you never thought it would happen to you. you tried to think logically, which would calm down your nerves only for a little bit.

“i’m almost there,” he told you. he pulled onto the same street as the restaurant, and he wondered why someone would even dare scare you. the area was well-lit, populated. there were people out and about, and yet this guy didn’t seem to care. it just enraged him even more.

you saw the guy round a corner, and you didn’t have anywhere to go. you stiffened, your back rigid as this man approached you. you could see more of his face, and you made sure to sear it into your mind. you could hear your heart beat in your ears, blood rushing through your body. your hands shook, and not because there was a chill in the air.

“can i help you?” you dared speak, trying to sound confident, to sound like you could knock him out if you wanted to.

“you left your wallet,” he replied. on the phone, joe listened, pulling into the parking deck. you were engaging in conversation with this man, and he just hoped that this guy didn’t want to do anything else.

“oh, thanks,” you took the wallet from him, your heart pounding. your eyes flicked to the ramp, watching as joe’s sleek porsche came into view. you almost cried with relief. joe parked in the aisleway, opening and shutting the door. he’d hung up the phone the second he pulled onto the level, preparing for whatever it was he was going to see.

“is there a problem?” joe’s voice is tight, his eyes are hard as he eyes this man down. he walked up to him, a certain strut to his stride. he looked taller, bigger, but maybe it was your mind playing tricks on you.

“i was just giving the lady her wallet back, man,” her follower defended.

“then why the hell are you still here?” joe snapped, stepping between you and the guy.

“she seemed afraid, wanted to make sure she was ok,” he replied, sounding smart. joe didn’t like his attitude, but he also knew a slug to the face wasn’t going to fix anything.

“she’s fine, so get out,” he snapped, his voice raising. joe was a good 4 inches taller than this other man, and it made you feel safer. joe squared his shoulders, the tension in his body building as he towered over the other man. you shrunk behind joe, praying for this moment to end. you took careful breaths, trying to control your surging anxiety.

“what the hell is your problem, man?” he snapped, and joe couldn’t hold himself together much longer.

“my problem?” joe hissed, inching towards the other man, “my problem is that you followed her here. my problem is that you’re just now saying something about a wallet,” joe was seething, his fists clenching and unclenching. he wasn’t going to say he scared you, he didn’t want him thinking he won in any way. no one should be proud of scaring someone or wanting to scare someone, unless it was joe in that moment.

“well maybe if she wasn’t running i would have been able to give it to her,” he argued. joe needed to breathe, to take a step back, but this guy was trying to justify his following you. it continued to boil his blood, to churn his stomach.

joe shoved this guy back, hard enough to give you some space, but not enough to knock him down.

“get the fuck out of this parking deck, i don’t want to see you again,” joe’s voice was gravelly as he stared this guy down. he watched as the man stalked off and left the parking deck. joe’s breaths were the only thing heard in the silence. he turned towards you, his expression immediately softening.

“you alright?” he asked, wrapping his arms around you, pulling you in close to his chest. you melted into his embrace, the safety of it. the tears finally fell, the adrenaline that once coursed through your veins slowing its pace. you held onto joe, but you wanted to get out of there.

“i’m ok now that you’re here,” you pulled away. he nodded, wiping your tears from your eyes. the pads of his thumbs felt cool on the heat of your skin, calming down the nerves in your body.

“good, let’s go home,” he hummed, kissing the top of your head. he walked you to your car, helping you in. you felt safe in your car; it allowed to finally breathe and release the tension in your chest. tears flowed down your cheeks you pulled out, following joe all the way home.

—

once you were home, enveloped in the warmth and smell of comfort, you changed into comfortable clothes. you were still shaken up, your body shaking from the adrenaline crash. you walked out of the bathroom, joining joe on the bed. he immediately wrapped you in his arms, giving you a gentle squeeze. he didn’t know what he’d do if he got there too late, if he got there and something despicable had happened. he’d lose his mind, that was for sure.

he just couldn’t get the sound of your voice out of his head. the sound of fear.

“feel better?” he hummed against your hair, pulling himself out of his own head. you nodded against his chest, listening to his steady heartbeat. his fingers ran up down your spine, spreading warmth throughout your body. you were safe. no one was going to hurt you.

“i’m still shaky, but i’m much better,” you admitted. he could feel your hands, the slight tremor to them as you laid against his chest.

“good,” he replied, running his hands up and down your back, “i’m always a call away,”

“i know,” you said, words muffled against his chest. silence rode by, safety once again seeping back into your bones. he was the one you ran to, the one you’d always call if you needed help. he’d always answer that call, too. your mind drifted with the returning feeling of safety, joe’s actions returning to the forefront of your mind. his tone, his body. you chuckled at the thought, curling further into him.

“what?” he asked, watching as you looked up at him.

“seeing you get all protective has me feeling some type of way,” you laughed, making joe roll his eyes. he kissed the crown of your head, a smile on his lips.

“i think it’s about time little miss got some sleep,” he smiled, reaching over and turning out the light. your laugh broke the darkness, bringing its own kind of light. he was thankful you were feeling ok enough to make suggestive jokes. hearing you laugh was one of the most healing things in his life.

“sweet dreams, my love,” he hummed, feeling you drift off to sleep, safe in his arms.

went overboard but i hope this is ok anon! please enjoy!! as always, i’m so thankful for your support and your love! you guys are amazing <3

tags: @wickedfun9

[sweetbunpura]

Filled with Static...

Summary: Yuu was already fed up before coming to Playful Land and now that it's over... She has some very choice words for she has reached her boiling point...

Sorry in advance~

Yuu watches with hollow eyes as Fellow and Gidel depart without having to face the consequences of their actions. Everyone jokes around her about what they just went through, but static is rapidly and quickly filling Yuu's ears. She moves away from the group and makes her way down a street, unaware of the sound of footsteps behind her. A hand lands on her shoulder and she's quick to slap it off.

"Ow, rude much?"

Yuu turns to see Ace with his arms crossed. "What?"

"Just wanted to know why you took off like that."

"Why do you care?"

"Wow, jeez." Ace scoffed. "I knew you were snippy from the start, but I thought that would've cleared up. What's the big deal?"

"What's the big deal? What's the big deal!?" Her voice echoes throughout the small area of the docks. "Ace, are you fucking blind as well as a total fucking moron!?" She jabs her hand to where Playful Land used to be. "We almost got turned into puppets and sold off because of you guys!"

"Hey, we got out in the end!"

"No, we didn't. If Fellow hadn't gotten that phone call, we'd be goners." The others have stopped a few feet away, but Yuu ignores them. "And you're cracking jokes about it."

"Well, destroying the park was-"

"I mean about the whole thing, you brainless baboon." She snarls. "From the start, you ignored all the fucking warning signs that said you should stay far away from this man. Did Azul tricking you not ring any bells in that empty head of you?" She tapped her finger against Ace's forehead. "And even when you were told that the warning signs were blaring red, you still ignored them."

"Hold on." Ace growled. "Why am I getting signaled out?"

"Oh it's not just you, Ace." She points behind him. "It goes double for those cacophony of idiots."

"Wow, rude, Yuu-chan..." Cater mutters.

"I get that you guys are like this. It's all fun and games to the ones who can use magic." She shakes her hand in a mocking way. "But this is just another scar on my body that I do not need." She pulls up her sleeves to show the overblot scars...as well as a new wooden looking scar on her wrist. "You guys think this is a joke, when it's not. You're risking my life with your guys shit."

"You came with us!" Ace argues.

"Cause I had to make sure my useless excuse for a fucking cat didn't keel over and die!" Yuu shouts and begins shoving Ace. "You. Treat. Me. Like. I'm. Expendable." She pushes him back. "I'm a living being too, jack ass, what I have done to warrant being treated lower than dirt? Every time this happens, and I almost lose my life in the process... how many more times is this going to be an almost before it actually happens?"

The red head narrows his eyes and snorts. "If you hate it here so much, why don't you just go back home?"

"Ace..." Lilia tries to say but is cut off by Yuu socking Ace in the face and sending him to the ground.

"NEWS FLASH, ASSHOLE!" The look in Yuu's eyes are murderous. "I'VE BEEN TRYING TOO! YOU GUYS CAN JUST CALL UP YOUR FAMILY OR SEND THEM A QUICK TEXT TO CHECK UP ON THEIR WELL BEING! YOU'RE A PORTAL AWAY FROM HOME! I HAVE NOTHING, I GOT NOTHING, I HAVE NO FAMILY HERE AND I AM REMINDED OF IT EVERY DAY BY YOU GUYS AND BY CROWLEY!" Tears well up in her eyes. "I've had it here. I'm gone. I'm leaving NRC, I'm getting far away from you guys." She turns to leave and rubs her eyes. "Enjoy the rest of your fucking lives."

"Yuu-chan!"

"Shrimpy!"

"Herbivore, come back!"

"Potato!"

"Henchhuman!" Grim tries to follow after her only to lower his ears and back up as she shoots the darkest glare she can muster at him. "I'm....I'm..."

Yuu disappears into the morning crowd that had gathered to learn what the commotion was about. She did not return to NRC that day...rather Crewel had found her, curled up outside his temporary house.

"Oh, Pup...." He pulls his coat off, wraps it around the crying young lady, and helps her inside.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The real problem with anonymity

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then San Francisco (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

According to "the greater internet fuckwad theory," the ills of the internet can be traced to anonymity:

Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/greater-internet-fuckwad-theory

This isn't merely wrong, it's dangerously wrong. The idea that forcing people to identify themselves online will improve discourse is demonstrably untrue. Facebook famously adopted its "real names" policy because Mark Zuckerberg claimed to believe that "Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity":

https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/14/facebook-and-radical-transparency-a-rant.html

In service to this claimed belief, Zuckerberg kicked off the "nym wars," turning himself into the sole arbiter of what each person's true name was, with predictably tragicomic consequences:

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/

Facebook is, famously, one of the internet's most polluted reservoirs of toxic interpersonal conduct. That's not despite the fact that people have to use their "real" names to participate there, but because of it. After all, the people who are most vulnerable to bullying and harassment are the ones who choose pseudonyms or anonymity so that they can speak freely. Forcing people to use their "real names" means that the most powerful bullies speak with impunity, and their victims are faced with the choice of retreat or being targeted offline.

This can be a matter of life and death. Cambodian dictator Hun Sen uses Facebook's real names policy to force dissidents to unmask themselves, which exposes them to arbitrary detention, torture, and extrajudicial killing. For members of the Cambodian diaspora, the choice is to unmask themselves or expose their family back home to retaliation:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/facebook-cambodia-democracy

Some of the biggest internet fuckwads I've ever met – and I've met some big ones! – were utterly unashamed about using their real names. Some of the nicest people I know online have never told me their offline names. Greater internet fuckwad theory is just plain wrong.

But that doesn't mean that anonymity is totally harmless. There is a category of person who reliably uses a certain, specific kind of anonymity to do vicious things that inflicts serious harm on whole swathes of people: corporate bullies.

Take Tinyletter. Tinyletter is a beloved newsletter app that was created to help people who just wanted to talk to others, without a thought to going viral or getting rich. It was sold to Mailchimp, which was sold to Intuit, who killed it:

https://www.theverge.com/24085737/tinyletter-mailchimp-shut-down-email-newsletters

Tinyletter was a perfect little gem of a service. It cost almost nothing to run, and made an enormous number of peoples' lives better every day. Shutting it down was an act of corporate depravity by some faceless Intuit manager who woke up one day and said "Fuck all those people. Just fuck them."

No one knows who that person was. That person will never have to look those people in the eyes – those people whose lives were made poorer for that Intuit executive's indifference. That person is the greater fuckwad, and that fuckwaddery depends on their anonymity.

Or take @Pixsy, a corporate shakedown outfit that helps copyleft trolls trick people into making tiny errors in Creative Commons attributions and then intimidates them into handing over thousands of dollars:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator/

Copyleft trolling is an absolutely depraved practice, a petty grift practiced by greedy fuckwads who are completely indifferent to the harm they cause – even if it means bankrupting volunteer-run nonprofits for a buck:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/02/commafuckers-versus-the-commons/

Pixsy claims that it is proud of its work "defending artists' rights," but when I named the personnel who signed their names to these profoundly unethical legal threats, Pixsy CEO Kain Jones threatened to sue me:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/13/an-open-letter-to-pixsy-ceo-kain-jones-who-keeps-sending-me-legal-threats/

The expectation of corporate anonymity runs deep and the press is surprisingly complicit. I once spent weeks working on an investigative story about a multinational corporation's practices. I spent hours on the phone with the company's VP of communications, over the course of many calls. When we were done, they said, "Now, of course, you can't name me in the article. All of that has to be attributed to 'a spokesperson.'"

I was baffled. Nothing this person said was a secret. They weren't blowing the whistle. They weren't leaking secrets. They were a corporate official, telling me the official corporate line. But they wouldn't sign their name to it.

I wrote an article about for the Guardian. It was the only Guardian column any of my editors there ever rejected, in more than a decade of writing for them:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/05/14/anodyne-anonymity/

Given the press's deference to this anodyne anonymity, it's no wonder that official spokespeople expect this kind of anonymity. I routinely receive emails from corporate spokespeople disputing my characterization of their employer's conduct, but insisting that I not attribute their dubious – and often blatantly false – statements to them by name.

These are the greater corporate fuckwads, who commit their sins from behind a veil of anonymity. That brand of bloodless viciousness, depravity and fraud absolutely depends on anonymity.

Mark Zuckerberg claimed that "multiple identities" enabled bad behavior – as though it was somehow healthy for people to relate to their bosses, lovers, parents, toddlers and barbers in exactly the same way. Zuckerberg's motivation was utterly transparent: having "multiple identities" doesn't mean you "lack integrity" – it just makes it harder to target you for ads.

But Zuckerberg couldn't enshittify Facebook on his own. For that, he relies on a legion of anonymous Facebook managers. Some of these people undoubtably speak up for Facebook users' interests when their colleagues propose putting them in harm's way for the sake of some arbitrary KPI. But the ones who are making those mean little decisions? They absolutely rely on anonymity to do their dirty work.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/04/greater-corporate-fuckward-theory/#counterintuit-ive

[yanmuffins]

I've been thinking and I've come to the conclusion that it wouldn't make much sense for Bruce to neglect one of his children.

Think about it, in canon, most of the mistakes he made that ended up harming his family were either because he was completely buried in work, or because he was slightly manipulated, both by the narrative and by third parties.

In addition, he also cannot fully communicate with others, both because of his early trauma, the loss of his parents, and all the loneliness caused by the grief he went through growing up. Not to mention the years of self-discipline and training he went through to become Batman. From everything he's seen and experienced, and all the scars he has, I can't imagine how much that grief and and especially a sense of justice, survived.

so I don't think he would simply neglect one of his children

What I propose is; accidental negligence. Think about it, if he is busy all the time with both Batman and his other persona, Brucie Wayne, and then the justice league, investigations, meetings of Wayne Enterprise, galas, charities, other rich people, the usual rogues gallery of Gotham, etc, etc, I don't think he has much time to spend with anyone.

He is able to spend more time with his other children because they are all vigilantes, like him, and are usually just as busy as he is. Having a civilian child in the middle of this mess wouldn't do much good, especially if that child doesn't know what they do most of the time, like, y'know, vigilantlism.

Imagine everyone's absolute horror when they realize, after the p&f reader is unfortunately busted, that they paid so little attention to that child that she managed to do all these crazy things right under their noses for the whole summer. And who's to say she hadn't been doing this before this summer? How many things have they inevitably missed in her life?

What I mean is that to counter the p&f reader's luck, everyone in the batfam is unlucky enough not to be able to spend time with her. And they are aware of it.

Their guilt would be immense and the angst would be delicious.

(And it would explain how Damian hás time to spend with p&f reader, since he's a kid and his only obligations are school, socialization and being Robin, so he would technically have more time??? If that even makes sense???)

context &. context.

YOU!! YOU GET IT!!

i wholeheartedly agree!

not that "accidental" neglect is any better, it's neglect all the same and has negative consequences in so many levels. but when we're talking about Bruce Emotionally Constipated And Terrible At Communication and Could Sometimes Make Better Choices Regarding His Kids Wayne, it could absolutely happen.

i'm not one to make character analysis because i have very shallow knowledge of Batman lore, but...

like you said, all of Bruce's children participate in vigilantism. they're all extraordinary, most have horrible trauma, and have relied on him for guidance. they are all Robin, and more relatable to him, in a way. that means he's consequently more involved in their lives, more physically there engaging with them, forming an emotional bond, acting as a mentor and father figure. on top of that, like you said, he has a whole life as Bruce Wayne and Batman going on.

which brings us to neglected! Reader, more specifically mine: P&F! Reader and Vampire! Reader.

on a... financial, material level, I believe they wouldn't want for anything. Alfred is the one managing their bank account and making sure they're well-provided for and though it's fun for angst purposes, i don't think they would have a tiny little bedroom isolated from everyone in the manor, mostly because it's our favorite butler who would select which bedroom Bruce's child would be staying at in this gigantic mansion with plenty unocuppied rooms. Alfred would NOT put you in the broom closet. it would be a bedroom that's at least as big as Damian's in Son of Batman, for example.

(i more than understand suspension of disbelief and playing around with all sorts of interesting concepts and characters, so I'm not criticizing anyone!)

in fact, i think it's kinda worse that, say, you have a bedroom that's a wall across from Tim's and he still kinda forgets you exist.

also, i believe Bruce's kid would absolutely have access to a more than generous amount of money. not broke at all.

so the only type of neglect going on here is of the emotional kind. your father and your siblings have created tight-knit bonds amongst themselves based on their shared experiences and the proximity brought by them all working as vigilantes, and you're just not a part of the club.

timing is also relevant.

P&F! Reader arrives at the manor some time after Damian, which means that not only have all relationships been formed over the years, Bruce has also experienced having kids, as well as having a biological child suddenly enter his life. they're a fish out of the water, and their dad is kinda awkward about this (apparently) normal child that showed up at his doorstep. while Damian is still kind of adapting, running around at night trying to bypass Bruce's security system and solve dangerous cases by himself, P&F! Reader is in their bedroom having a virtual sleepover with their Metropolis friends, streaming movies and eating caramelized popcorn.

fun fact: Damian and P&F! Reader are neighbors. he was not happy about Alfred placing his half-sibling on the room right beside his for the longest time. P&F! Reader has definetly caught him sneaking out, but they're no snitch. and you're right, he does have more free time, and he's also on summer break so no school and no homework to worry about. He's got free time to be his sibling's keeper.

and as we all know, the impression that P&F! Reader is just a normal regular kid that totally doesn't build ridiculous thingamabobs in their spare time, it's kinda easy to forget they're there amidst the Wayne family mayhem(s). Bruce is also kinda doesn't really know what to do with this kid or how to connect with them, but they don't really demand immediate attention and seem to be doing fine – so he probably shouldn't worry too much, right?

you could also argue that he's kinda awkward (emotionally constipated) with this kid and is very bad at consoling and accomodating them after the trauma that made them have to move in with him. he doesn't straight up forget they exist, although he starts paying more attention to them after Damian gets more involved in ther bio sibling's antics. and when it comes to siblings, it's just easier for their relationship to never evolve past more superficial interactions (with the exception of Damian who decides to mind P&F! Reader's business earlier on, more or less). P&F! Reader doesn't know about the vigilantism for a long time, so it's natural that they're excluded from any and all matters regarding that. and because everyone else is so busy with their own lives and P&F! Reader seems to be doing fine, so easy to overlook, has plenty of friends in and out of their new school and the Batfam is already a formed unit... Well, you get the picture.

there's also the matter of Damian. he is the kid that "needs more attention" because of his background. he's been through a lot. nevermind the possibility that you might also have gone throguh your own fair share of trauma, at the end of the day you're the easier kid. the "okay" kid with regular problems. which is sad and unfair, but that's what we're here for, isn't it? and Dick is the biggest offender when it comes to that.

not that P&F! Reader is bothered by any of that! They have an amazing summer ahead of them. 😎 It's definetly Batfam being unlucky that prevents them from spending time with P&F! Reader, but that allowed them to mostly enjoy summer without being smothered by their family. the guilt would be unmatched, that is for sure.

"And who's to say she hadn't been doing this before this summer?"

hehe :)

vampire! Reader (she was not mentioned but I'm talking about her anyway, spoilers for the fic because i want to rant) is a different story. again, timing. she arrived at the manor sometime between Dick leaving for Bludhaven and Jason being brought in, so she didn't really get a chance to develop a deeper emotional connection with Dick. that also means Bruce was a lot younger when he is faced with a biological child being thrown at his door, not to mention the less-than-ideal-circumstances in which she came to be in his custody.

and after trying to make her his newest sidekick didn't work, in the coming years he would dedicate most of his time to fighting crime as Batman and taking care of/mentoring Jason who had a rough past and is now his new sidekick. connecting and relating to Jason was easier than connecting with Vampire! Reader, but he always made sure to check on her and make sure she was okay (and the answer was always yes, because of course it was).

during this time Jason and Vampire! Reader were actually pretty close, but then he, uh. kinda died horrifically. so not only was Vampire! Reader dealing with the loss of her brother, her father was now full-on neglecting her, self-absorbed in his grief, so she felt the proper thing to do would be repress her emotions to accomodate her father and try to be his emotional support. not that it worked, but she was there! so we have the emotional neglect and we have Vampire! Reader starting to take a parental role for her own father because he's not being a parent for her. she was also completely alone in that huge manor with the exception of Alfred because none of the other kids were in the picture yet, and Dick had long since moved out. as you can see, not very nice :)

from then on she just kinda blends into the background. financially she's provided for. she is her father's daughter, so communication and expressing emotion are not her forté, but she tries her best to connect with the incoming batkids. it does not work. i have said this before, but she is the mature child, the (again) normal one who puts other people's needs before her, so she doesn't complain when Bruce makes time for literally every other kid who becomes Robin except her. but don't be mistaken: Bruce is definetly more controlling and aware of Vampire! Reader in comparison to P&F! Reader due to reasons (guess you can say early yandere signs?). Jason too is... Sort of complicated. the situation here is definetly darker and resonates with tone of the story better. and when Bruce realizes how terrible he was? oh, boy.

so I guess you can play around a lot with the neglectful! Reader trope, and that's what makes it so entertaining. yeah. that's all I have to say for today, I guess??

[rockpaperimpala]

So about Netflix's the Last Airbender....

I am literally so confused you guys. You made me think I would HATE this show. And I LOVED it. Me. Known perfectionist and hater.

Katara was lovely. Yes, she started as a more soft spoken character than her cartoon version, but she was still passionate and hopeful throughout, just visibly unsure of herself. I think people were thrown off by this actress' natural way of expressing herself, which is Different from animated katara for sure, but not bad. Then she spends the whole season growing in Confidence and Fire. I Adored her fight with Paku, it really did feel like a payout of the whole season's development, and the bending kicked ass!

The Bending Kicked ass!!! The martial arts was fun and fast and creative and exciting! It looked SO good. That alone would be enough reason for me to watch and enjoy any show.

Zuko's actor was fantastic. He really captured the rage and confusion of this 16 year old banished prince. And there were so many Added moments between him and Iroh wich to me enriched their relationship. Like YES! This is why I'm watching, to see more of them, to see things done a little differently.

Iroh facing the consequences of his actions at Ba Sing Se!! That's what I'm here for!

Zuko's relationship with the men on his ship! That's what I'm here for!

The Extra layers we get to Ozai manipulating his children!

Also no one is talking about Admiral Zhao, who I had SO much fun with. I feel like they slightly fleshed out his character in a really dramatic way, really developing the hubris and frankly insane grasping ambition of someone who would kill the moon. I completely enjoyed this wilder, less controlled version of him, who comes up through the season from basically nothing and no one!

I am OBSESSED with King BUMI and his anger and disillusionment with the world! Like this was SO real. Living a hundred years of futile war would do that!!!! It is one of my favorite changes to the whole series. This new layer of emotion and character depth is what I'm here for!

Sokka was SO funny. He literally had me laughing out loud so often. That actor GETs Sokka, and GETS the way his humor is delivered. And is also able to tap into the more vulnerable side of him. People said he was "obsessed" with leadership. WHAT? That is a young person trying desperately to do his best and to try and find his place in the world, to figure what he has to offer. I loved his pride at hearing the Mechanist say that he would make a good engineer, and the sweetness of the moment that Yue's father says that he can be a hero without being a warrior. Sokka does so much growth in this series, in understanding himself and life.

And his chemistry with Suki was adorable!! I even like him and Yue (who was a totally unexpected sweetheart, despite her terrible wig)!! Like he has that same ability that Sokka has in the original to Connect with people.

Aang was great! He WAS fun loving and sweet and funny. I don't know what you guys wanted. Cartoons are always bigger and more exaggerated than live action. People's eyes swell up an, birds fly around their heads, and there are funny sound effects. That larger than life quality is the strength of animation! You have to look for different strength in live action. Like the SUBTLETIES of the acting choices. This little actor brought so much kindness, innocence, and strength to Aang.

And I FELT his frustration at being asked to do this at 12, his fresh hope anytime it looked like someone more experienced would be able to help him and no one did, and that's why he didn't learn waterbending this season, because he kept waiting for an freaking ADULT to show him the way, to help him carry this immense burden, but every adult he meets asks him for help instead, asks him to carry it himself, and then the finale hits and he realizes that there won't be any adults helping, he does have figure this out himself, and he makes the hard choice, takes on responsibility more than his years and offers himself to the ocean spirit, and he might have been lost entirely if not for Katara!

And that counter running theme to the show pays off: that he doesn't have to do it alone. He may not have more experienced guidance, because the adults have let him down again and again, but his friends will be with him, and they will figure it out together!

This is there throughout the series! Katara tells him this about learning waterbending, when he says he still wants to wait. Bumi tells him this in the palace at Omashu, and Aang sees the faith he has in his friends repaid!

I like these changes! And the show still found time for silly fun adventures and character building moments.

The show was never going to be the animated original. That is already a Masterpiece, and it frankly did NOT need to be adapted at all. I did not WANT a live action adaptation. I was adamantly convinced I would hate it. But the changes that they netflix show gave are what I Iike most about it. If I want to see Zuko say "you rise with the moon, I rise with the sun," I will go watch the animated original, because that version is perfect. And now, if i want to see Zuko say "Lu ten would have been proud to have you as a father," and see iroh pull him into a tight hug, I can watch this live action version, which is very good too. I'm going to disagree with most of the people on here and say that the Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender, DOES capture the heart of what we liked about the original show. It's spirit, fun, excitement, and characters. And the changes made are the reason we should be watching.

[rederiswrites]

I wrote this out for FB and then thought I might as well share it here as well. So if you have ADHD, are a late-diagnosed adult with ADHD, and most particular if you are a person with a uterus and/or have children, this one might be for you.

...

Last couple of days have been a little...weird. Let's start at the beginning. Buckle up and learn something.

As many of you already know, I have ADHD. It's a condition with a PR problem--a lot of people, often even medical professionals, have a very distorted idea of what it does, and a very limited one. For starters, it's not about parenting, or lead paint, or lack of discipline. It's genetic, *highly* heritable, starts in childhood and persists throughout life, and is a sufficiently severe disability that it comes with a decrease in life expectancy of up to 13 years. It is a visible difference that can be perceived in brain scans. These are all, at this point, well established and thoroughly attested in the scientific literature. ADHD affects up to 5% of the population and appears across cultures. It is very common.

It's not just about lack of attention--in fact, plenty of medical professionals think the name should be changed, as in fact the problem isn't the volume of attention but the way we struggle to direct it. We are motivated by interest, and struggle to properly weight future goals and consequences, specifically because they are in the future. If the robin outside the window is more immediately rewarding to our brain, we will watch that, and not the teacher. Our ability to properly weigh the consequences of that choice is negatively impacted by our own biochemistry.

We struggle with many of what are termed the "executive functions", the self management systems of the brain. Degree and presentation varies from person to person, but initiating tasks, completing tasks, staying ON task, restraining impulses, emotional regulation, and working memory are among the things impacted. My working memory is notoriously horrible. When they send you those activation codes on your phone? I often have to go back and read them out several times to enter a six digit number. I have to stop and remind myself what I'm doing between every step of my morning bathroom routine, or making tacos. Sometimes I take off my glasses to put on my contacts, reset, and reach for my pill bottles while I still can't see. My long-term memory is also affected, with my husband de facto serving as the memory-holder of the family.

Another common symptom I personally experience is "time blindness", which can mean both that you have no "internal clock" that has a clear idea of the passage of time, and that our ability to properly weight the importance of things in the future is impacted. So, for example, I can know intellectually what's coming, but it takes some really complex and exhausting antics to actually focus and work on those things if they're more than a week or sometimes even a couple days away.

Without externally imposed controls, many ADHD people flounder and fail to meet social markers of success. Estimates of how many ADHD people manage to complete college range from 5% to 15%. Again: 5% to 15%! I have failed twice myself. WITH externally imposed controls, ADHD people often have to work far harder to make their brains do what is required, and either fail and develop an image of themselves as failures (usually with plenty of external help), or keep fighting and suffer crippling burnout.

To that point, ADHD is HIGHLY comorbid with a whole range of knock-on conditions, some of which stem from the same brain patterns that give rise to the ADHD itself, and others from the trauma of living with a disability, but they include very high rates of depression, anxiety, fibromyalgia, social isolation, and addiction. I have dealt with depression, anxiety, and fibromyalgia my entire adult life. I have never ended up in the trap of self-medication but let's be real, that's partly about having supports and a healthy social environment. It's not some accomplishment I praise myself for, nor is addiction a sin I shame anyone for.

And anxiety has a very different texture to it when what you're really anxious about is the next time you fail in some catastrophic way. Lock your keys in the car. Completely space on a doctor's appointment. Go to pay for groceries and find that your wallet is next to your computer at home. Because the anxiety is not irrational fear of some generalized bad thing. These things do and will happen, regularly. Sometimes it feels like the only fix is getting good at recovering. Because no matter how many times you manage not to blow it, there's always another chance.

So, the struggle to be a reliable person, to be a consistent parent, to be a dependable life partner, is continuous. And it is so so so hard and it sometimes feels like you're not actually making any progress at all. I have tried therapy. I have tried three (or four??) different non-stimulant medications that sometimes help people. One of them DID help. ALL of them had catastrophic side effects. There were times as I was trialing these medications when I needed to be minded because I wasn't capable of taking care of anything, not even myself. Without Jacob, I don't know where I'd be. Not here. Probably in poverty, which is where he found me.

I have tried probably most organizational tools you know of. I have tried imposing schedules, all of which turned to dust and ash when the next fibromyalgia flareup or the next major life disruption happened. I don't think a new schedule has ever lasted a month before.

I HAVE felt like I'm made progress lately. I learned things that really helped my fibromyalgia, which gave me the space to work on other things--just like getting the borders of a puzzle finished. Enough things were spiraling upwards, and I think I might be cementing some gains. I have felt optimistic.

But in the meantime, I asked my doctor if, now that no less than three cardiologists have insisted my heart is Perfectly Healthy, I could finally try stimulant medications. After decades of use, Adderall, Ritalin, and a couple related stimulant drugs are still the gold standard for ADHD treatment and improve outcomes substantially for many people. And stimulants are in serious international shortage. Have been for many months. The only one she thought she could get me was Adderall. And she didn't dare try anything but the standard 30mg because nonstandard dosages would be even less attainable.

So now I'm taking Adderall. One week on 30mg, which I stopped when it was clear my function was being seriously impaired rather than improved. Reassessed with the doctor, now trying 60mg, because that's two of the pills I've already managed to obtain. It is....too much. And in some ways it fixes problems I wasn't working on, while so far making my executive function, my initiation or even *contemplation* of tasks, virtually nonexistant. Which was, of course, the thing I was trying to fix.

So yeah. When you have the context, I figure you can understand the substance of my frustration yourself. If you have children, I don't think you need my help to imagine what it would be like to know that you are unpredictable, or to see that your children are used to to you undergoing events that make you act strangely and erratically. I think just knowing that often, new medications introduce themselves by giving me a migraine, and I know this is possible when I take that first pill, is fairly self-explanatory. And so I expect you can imagine what it would be like, with all of this as a backdrop, to experience worsening of your symptoms, probably because of age-related hormonal changes. To in desperation try something you'd previously been denied. And to learn that it probably won't help.

In a week, I will either give up on Adderall for now or find a way to make it work. I'll put together the pieces yet again--at this point, possibly my strongest personal skill--and continue that upward climb as far as I can get. I'm incredibly fortunate in that regardless, I will be fed and dry and warm and loved. But right now, I feel justified in some serious dismay.